Death fall from El Capitan

Marianne Costantinou and Gregory Lewis, OF THE EXAMINER STAFF

Published 4:00 am, Saturday, October 23, 1999

As hundreds of park visitors - including her husband - watched from the meadow, a veteran parachutist plunged to her death from the top of Yosemite's El Capitan during a protest intended to showcase the safety of the sport.

Jan Davis, 60, a Santa Barbara stuntwoman whose real-life and film escapades as a sky diver and parachutist made her well-known in the extreme-sports community, was the fourth of five jumpers scheduled Friday to leap off the national park's famed 3,500-foot granite monolith during the protest.

The jumps, which are illegal, were made in cooperation with park authorities.

The first three jumps shortly before 2 p.m. went without a hitch, said Scott Gediman, the park spokesman, who stood in the meadow with more than 200 onlookers. The jumpers pulled open their chutes almost immediately, he said, and spread their arms like soaring eagles as they floated through the clear sunny sky to the meadow.

Then it was Davis' turn.

She leapt off the cliff - but her arms stayed at her sides, said Gediman. She never opened her chute. She landed on Talus Slope, a huge pile of granite rocks at El Capitan's base caused by landslides.

"Everyone thought it was OK, and then people said: "Open up! Open up!' Then . . . the whole place turned quiet," said Paul Sakuma, an Associated Press photographer.

In the meadow was Davis' husband, Tom Sanders, an aerial stunt photographer whose credits include James Bond movies and pictures of ex-President George Bush sky diving. Sanders had been filming the jumps. He slumped onto his camera in grief after watching his wife fall.

"He was beside himself," said Gediman. "To stand there, literally filming your wife plunging to her death, is just horrible."

The accident was only the latest tragedy to befall the national park. Four people - three Yosemite tourists and an employee - were murdered this year, and other sports adventurers have died including a parachutist who drowned June 9 while trying to elude park rangers.

Friday's demonstration was in response to that jumper's death, and was meant to demonstrate the safety of the sport known as BASE jumping - which is parachuting off stationary objects, like mountains, bridges, skyscrapers. It was well-publicized and attended by ESPN and other national news media.

"This was their national showcase to show how safe BASE jumping is," said Gediman. "That goes in the irony department."

The sport - named for an acronym of "building, antenna, span, earth" - is considered more dangerous and technically difficult than sky diving because the jump-off point is closer to the ground, and it is performed in tighter spaces.

"There's so much that can go wrong with BASE jumping - packing the parachute for one," said John Chapman of Skydive San Francisco, located in Cloverdale, Sonoma County. "There's a lot of careless packing. The parachute can open, take a 180-degree turn, and there's a cliff behind you. The parachute can collapse, and you've only got 500 feet and not (enough time for) another parachute.

"BASE jumping is very dangerous. That's why it's illegal."

Nationwide, an estimated 21 people have died during BASE jumps in the last two decades. Six jumpers have died in Yosemite, said Gediman.

It is illegal to BASE jump in Yosemite Park, as it is nearly everywhere in the country, but the height and sheer wall of El Capitan and the beauty of the park has been a magnet for BASE jumpers, who brave the stunt in poor lighting conditions to avoid rangers.

If they are caught at the park, said Gediman, jumpers are arrested, get a $2,000 fine and have their parachutes, often worth as much as $3,000, confiscated.

Davis was reportedly using a borrowed parachute for the jump because she didn't want her own confiscated, witnesses said.

"If only she had used her own gear, if she had only had her own gear," Sanders said over and over again, according to friends who tried to console him.

Sanders told them that Davis usually used a parachute that has a cord on her back. On the borrowed suit, the cord was on her leg.

Davis, who was a partner in her husband's aerial stunt photography and adventure travel business, Aerial Focus, was an experienced jumper. In 16 years, the grandmother had made more than 3,000 sky dives and 70 BASE jumps. She also claimed to be the first woman to jump from Venezuela's Angel Falls, which at 3,200 feet is the world's tallest waterfall.

"This is a tragic affair," said Bill Dause of the Parachute Center in Lodi. "We don't know anything aside from the equipment didn't operate properly. She was an experienced sky diver. She was an experienced BASE jumper. . . . Something didn't work."

On Friday, Davis was part of a group calling themselves Adventure Athletes, who arranged the protest, which they called "civil disobedience" in their press release. The group had the cooperation of the park, said Gediman.

The protest was organized in response to the death of Frank Gambalie III, who drowned in the Merced River on June 9 while trying to escape from park police after a jump.

The protesters warned that they would make the jumps with or without permission, he said. The park agreed to work with the group to ensure the safety of park visitors who would be in the vicinity of the landing zone, he said.

As part of the deal, the protesters agreed to be arrested after the jump, be fined and have their equipment confiscated, he said.

Chris Conkright, an employee of Aerial Focus, has jumped off El Capitan several times. Even after the accident, he spoke in favor of BASE jumping, saying:

"Have you ever looked over the edge of a tall building or a cliff and wondered what it would be like to jump off? I wondered and now I know what it's like: You're dead and all of a sudden you're alive again.

"With high risks come high rewards."

But not always.&lt;

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